The Monkey Link (42 page)

I looked like Neuhaus and taught piano. My pupil, a Kazakh by nationality, looked like the young Pasternak. I left my wife and married a housemaid, by whom I had a child. I was supposed to lead the baby, barefoot, across the piano, so that he would leave his touching footprints on the dusty lid. (Had something happened to me fairly recently, a lifetime ago, involving a piano?) Outside the window, meanwhile, there was supposed to be a thunderstorm: thunder, lightning, torrents down the windowpanes. My school friend came, an artist who had lost an arm in the war and who all his life had been hopelessly in love with the wife I had left—he came to reproach me for abandoning my wife. We reached no accord, and after insulting me he slammed the door so hard that the glass flew out and smashed to smithereens on the floor. Then my new wife, the former housemaid, arrived soaking wet in the downpour, her thin dress outlined her figure, and much became understandable. “That’s life,” she said. I suggested this phrase, and it was promptly inserted.

Director Sersov spent half the night expounding his plans to me. They were extensive. I was supposed to write a script for him. It was to be based on an incident that had actually happened. A group of young astrophysicists go on a fishing trip in the mountains on the border of Armenia and Azerbaijan. A snake crawls across the road. They try to drive around it. They look back—no snake. Where has it gone? They drive on. The fishing trip is a success.

But when they pack up their catch, they discover that the snake has gotten into their car. They try to chase it out, but it crawls up inside, someplace where they can’t get at it. Can you imagine?! Desert. Heat. The bite of the Blunt-nosed Viper is fatal .. , The fish are spoiling, characters are being revealed
 
…
Now, suddenly, a caravan. With the caravan, a Sufi. He knows how to converse with snakes. They ask the Sufi to persuade the snake to crawl out. The Sufi prays for a long time, and the snake finally consents. The infuriated astrophysicists start trying to kill it. The Sufi implores them not to do this, but they do. The Sufi is in despair, for the snakes will now cease to believe him. The Sufi curses them, prophesies their death. They send him on, return home, and get drunk.

I liked the word “Sufi,” but I didn’t like the ending. Yes, having them get drunk is good. But it’s only the beginning. They perish one by one, under very mysterious circumstances
 
…
“Who would allow such a thing?” the director said, sincerely offended, and I settled for the role of pianist.

In the morning I didn’t like the landscape. Not a drop of color in its face, not a blade of grass. Man had been here! Riddled with holes, black with grief, exhausted and abandoned—all the way to the horizon the earth was peopled only by black, rusted-out oil pumps. But even they were dead. Their beaks no longer pecked, because there was nothing to peck. And this was the site of the music school in which I taught pianoforte, if you please, to Kazakh children
 
…
And now I caught sight of an implausibly beautiful pomegranate, peeping out from behind a fortresslike clay
duval.
Within was paradise: roses, houris, and lamb’s fry with Czech beer
 
…
And now I stepped ankle-deep in a puddle of oil.

…
 
The baby refused to come to my arms. Perhaps I smelled of oil. It’s that kind of smell
 
…
like blood
 
…
you begin to be bothered by it yourself. The baby set up a bloodcurdling howl and would not leave his footprints on the piano; the Azerbaijani firemen ran out of the water that poured down the windowpane. The baby was cut from the script altogether, his mother having been paid for a day’s work. The result was worse for my image: now I married the housemaid just because of the dress clinging to her figure. My wife had been the former Natasha Rostova, but my new wife was the former sweetheart of the young Sergei Esenin. What a lady-killer I was! While the Azerbaijani firemen were eating, and then refilling the tank with water, it was decided to do the scenes in reverse order: first the wet wife. She was doused from a bucket that had been specially warmed on the gas. I was supposed to whisper something in her ear, and she was supposed to cry. I saw my new wife for the first time, and I didn’t like her. Everything went well, but the director’s viewfinder, with the distinct inscription “Nikon,” had been forgotten on the piano lid, which was in the frame. This ruined the
verité
of harsh wartime. But the warm water had been used up, and the actress began to freeze. Vodka was obtained from the first-aid kit, and the actress recovered.
I put my arms around her, and what did I see over her shoulder
?
{81}
 
…
A fresh bucket heating up, an Azerbaijani fireman courting a pretty assistant, people eating fried eggs, mending snags in panty hose, playing cards, knitting a sweater, selling, buying, bartering, changing their clothes, trying on new clothes and old clothes, stealing, drinking, drawing, fashioning spoon bait, reeling in their fishing lines—the cameras were rolling. Retake.

My wife stank of vodka, I of kerosene. “How’d you get so sozzled?” I whispered tenderly in her ear, and where she was supposed to burst out crying she burst out laughing. I was beginning to like her. Retake.

And every time, only the first take was any good.

My artist friend slammed the door, the glass shattered, and I, in confusion, not knowing what to do with it all, began to collect the splinters—but then abandoned the whole business. The assistants had done an excellent job: the glass had flown out as it was supposed to, had shattered into the requisite quantity of splinters in the designated spot, I had walked past as I was supposed to, had picked up a splinter as I was supposed to—but at that point I began to examine with curiosity the blob of plasticine adhering to it, for this was what they had used to hold the glass so that it could fly out, and I hadn’t even known that the plasticine was
 
…
Retake.

The second pane fell out before he had time to slam the door, and it gave him a cut on his only arm. First aid for the wounded
 
…
Retake.

The third pane was the last one. No more had been provided for. And it was thick. My friend had orders to slam the door as hard as ever he could, so that the glass would really fly out, really smash into a thousand pieces. My friend slammed as he was supposed to, the glass flew out as it was supposed to
 
…
I had never seen such a thing, and neither had anyone else. This was a large, rectangular pane of glass; somehow it fell upright, and without shattering at all it came rolling at me, waddling awkwardly, counting off its right angles with a clatter, completing turn after turn, one, two, and only on the third turn, after stopping to think, did it slowly topple sideways—again, without shattering. I stood open-mouthed and watched this miracle.

Some things have an idea behind them, and some things just are. It’s a rare piece of luck when there’s no meaning. And only in the movies is there such good fortune.

Something had happened yet again. I could stand no more.

Impoverishment of place. As though this whole solid, tangible, chosen world were really only a figment of the imagination. It had flown away just as lightly as a balloon. Atmosphere.

The atmosphere of description is somehow thicker and coarser than reality. Reality does not survive being described. Either it perishes or it gains full independence. Or did it ever exist at all? At any rate, whatever you have described, your only satisfaction will be that the text is finished. There will no longer be anything to compare it with. The past has disappeared somewhere, and the very space is gone.

And who created, re-created, incarnated, anticipated whom—the horse the chicken, or the cart the egg—will prove conclusively unclear, as a kind of ultimate conservation measure: so that nothing will infringe on anything, if only in the past. Who came first, did Dostoevsky create his
Demons,
or the demons us?
{82}
Did Dahl indeed create a
Dictionary of the Living Language
,
{83}
or had the language itself, by that moment, died? Had Russian literature finished, described all, or did the Revolution happen because all had been described, finished? Rather than guess, let us be in no hurry to settle any scores we may have with reality.

In the end, Columbus did discover India, not America.

Geography is like a wife. Travel is our polygamy. If we had a harem, we could stay in one place.

And so, all the places where I had loved to shut myself up and write a few pages died the same death: one day they entered a text. No matter how many vows I made to myself, on the principle “Don’t live where you fuck, don’t fuck where you live
 
…
 
” Where are Toksovo, Peredelkino, Dilijan, Tiflis, Goluzino, Tamysh? At all events, they have been described. Perhaps they do exist. But I have died for them.

Travel is a different matter. You’re not planning to live there. There you’re an invader—and that’s all. Crossing a space. Cutting across it. A surgical incision. A microscopic section. You dissect the space, or perhaps it dissects you. For some reason it doesn’t hurt. An adventure.

When I set out on a pilgrimage, I already know whether I’ll write about it. I know what I’ll write, and how. In this sense, although geography is finished, I am a professional traveler. I travel solely for the right to compose this or that “journey.” I bring home as souvenirs two or three fertilized details; they plump up nicely in my subconscious and send forth the necessary shoots.

One such detail I already had—Lucy’s loose tooth.

The rest was mere technicality. The Rafik
{84}
(there’s a delightful word! a hint of empire; produced in Riga) started off crammed with six people including the driver and the author, or eight at most, allowing space for just one Armenian (whose name might also be Rafik), one Abkhaz, one Georgian, one Jew, and then, in tight competition in the text, for a Greek, Pole, Persian, Ukrainian, Tat, Ossetian, Korean, Tatar, Chechen, stray European, American, or African. Dramatic unity was assured: a Russian driver drove the Rafik, and a Russian (the author) also sat in state beside him. It was no longer a problem to lead the conversation from monkey customs to inter-ethnic relations. After such passions, therefore, the attainment of the journey’s goal—contact with the free monkey herd—would serve as counterpoint, suggest an idea, and supply the finishing touch. Not inconceivably, the natural conclusion of the pilgrimage would be a planned picnic. That would serve for ellipsis points
 
…

All was clear, right up to the title.
Awaiting Monkeys.
Good! Who’s waiting for whom. Ambiguous. The tooth, the Rafik, the skirmish between the Greek and the anti-Semite, the frostbitten tails, the well-grown manes
 
…
What else? All was clear, just as it was. No sense in going, just to write something I would write in either case. I decided to write my “journey” without ever embarking on it.

I was in great shape—fit and ready. Sit down and write.

Nowhere to sit.

Whether Tamysh had died, or I had, or someone else there had died
 
…
I didn’t have the strength to return to my baby chicks. I moved on to Tiflis.

But something really had happened. That is, it was happening around me, in actual fact, beyond the rim of my writing desk. My desk was a chair. On it stood a typewriter. I sat on the bed and typed a composition on the very subject of whether a poet did or could have a
home,
apropos of my visit to yet another house-museum. “The Homeland, or Tomb” the composition was called, and the key to it was the comma in the title. I was writing in downtown Tiflis, on the ninth floor of a hotel, once again the Abkhazia, in Room 14, and I was reflecting on the fact that always and everywhere I ended up precisely in Room 14. In Erevan, too, it had been Room 14
 
…
What kind of residence permit was this? They couldn’t possibly overhear anything in my room except the chirping of the typewriter. But all the same, something was happening around me. While I typed, the ceiling seemed to be collapsing, or rather, getting lower, and when I stood up I almost bumped my head on it. A strange darkening all around, as before a thunderstorm, but the thunderstorm had not taken shape, or as at sunset, but sunset, too, was still a long way off. A shiver inside. Before my eyes a sort of shallow silvery wave, like a fish scale. As though I were turning into air; only a sort of final insolubility prevented it. When I looked at a man, I was very surprised that he also saw me. He approached and introduced himself: Valery Givivovivich, Givivich, Givich, Givovvich
 
…
Unpronounceable!
{85}
You can just call me Leroy, that’s what everyone calls me. I peered into his muscular pink face with pleasure. There was something attractive about him. I felt like telling him something I had so far told no one. But I didn’t know what, and he himself suggested it to me: Was it long since I had seen my brother? I replied readily, going into details I had forgotten forever. The trouble was, I said, that when I first fell in love and began to need money, I sold our joint collection, and at that time my brother was far away, and now where is he? now, too, he’s far away, in another country even, but he’ll be back soon, only this was a long time ago, we even had ancient Roman coins, and did you have dollars? or pounds? what, haven’t you heard about the Korean airliner?

He did, as it turned out, inform me of what had happened beyond the rim of my desk when I felt something happening. It had the aura of a Caribbean crisis and some other sort of anxiety, as in an attack of hay fever. All the flowers had long since gone by. When’s the last time you went anywhere? At that point I blurted out everything to him, how I never had a chance to travel abroad. “What do you want with America!” he exclaimed. “You must walk all around your homeland. All around it, on foot, in sneakers!” That’s what he said: in sneakers. He was wearing excellent sneakers, Adidas. We were standing at the summit of Jvari,
{86}
quite apart from the tourist crowd, like initiates, confessing to each other our mutual love for our homeland, at the very spot “Where the rivers, roaring, flow together, / Embracing like two sisters. The roar itself was not audible, but for a long time we watched how the Aragva and the Kura, after they flowed together, continued to flow as two different-colored streams in one bed. “Gray goose, white goose,
{87}
two sneaky geese.” In sneakers, in sneakers! the first goose exclaimed, and the second goose kept glancing at the first one’s red feet, unsure where he would get sneakers like that. He would go to his grave in white ones. Adidasov kept proposing that I walk all around my homeland, like Gorky, and I kept consenting to drive all around it, like Gogol. That was how we left it.